


Like A River, Like The Wind

by sparrowinsky



Category: Foreigner Series - C. J. Cherryh
Genre: Alien Culture, F/M, Love, Vignette, Waxing Philisophical, manchi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 00:58:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2753639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrowinsky/pseuds/sparrowinsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a general (if unspoken) consensus, among those who understand what Manchi is, that it's a great deal more complicated than love. </p><p>Bren Cameron disagrees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like A River, Like The Wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geri_chan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geri_chan/gifts).



> Geri_chan, your Foreigner prompt sent me into a solid week of philosophical pondering on manchi and love and relationships and attachments and all those similar things. 
> 
> This is the result and I hope it meets your desires for your yuletide story. Enjoy and I hope you have a lovely holiday!

It pleases Jago, though she will rarely admit it, that Bren-ji speaks carelessly with her.

He is so careful, so watchful. Sometimes Jago tries to understand what it is that the paidhi does, to truly feel it: tries to understand human thought the way he understands theirs.

It pulls at her mind, strangely discomfiting, and gives her ever more respect him. Bren-ji is an imperfect atevi, but she has seen the other humans, that are so very much more human, and knows that his approximation must be very difficult indeed.

And yet, he does it without thought, and often without ceasing, unless they are alone.

Then, the paidhi relaxes his guard, and speaks more openly, begins to sleepily murmur his philosophies, and trusts her not only to keep him safe (of course, for is she not his guard? Could he do otherwise? Yes, she reminds herself, thinking of a small pale body attempting to protect her), but to care, and perhaps to understand.

And Jago, though she is not a salad to be liked, tries.

It’s one of these times, on a too-warm, too-bright night, in the midst of a rare few days spent at Najida with neither miracle nor emergency calling their attention away and Bren-ji into danger, that he tries explaining love to her.

Again.

And she does try. She tries, and tries, and tries. Only, the brightness of the night makes her restless, the paidhi has consumed an unusual (for him) amount of spirits, and her head aches with the trying in a way that it usually doesn’t.

“Nai-ji,” she murmurs, and again when it becomes clear how distracted, how relaxed and unwary, he is.

Even here, even now, it puts her on edge, even though Banichi is a floor below, and the only servants here are known and trusted. 

Slowly, he turns his gaze to her. He smiles, one side of his mouth turning up. Jago understands it to be an expression of affection, of the human love he is trying so hard to explain. 

(Again. And again, and again, and Jago- though little prone to self-doubt- considers the why. Is, perhaps, some need not being met? The thought is not without discomfort, but she is the paidhi’s bodyguard before she is his lover, though he might not think so; and she does not know if this love, un-returned, might drive him mad. It is her duty to know these things, and protect him, even from his own unfathomable mind.)

But he turns to her nonetheless, and they make it to his bedroom without incident beyond Bren dismissing the servants before his braid is even taken out, forgetting the hurt he will need to soothe for it in the morning.

Jago, undoing his braid, is pleased, and takes the opportunity to run the golden-brown hair through her fingers. The color and texture are satisfying, though she has not yet worked out why.

(It even soothes her worry, a little; the lover’s worry over his safety, at least, if not the bodyguard’s professional judgment.)

He is quiet for so long, relaxing into her touch, that Jago is surprised when he continues their conversation— or rather, his soliliquy- as if he had never paused.

“Love is messy,” Bren says. He pauses, as if waiting for a response.

“I would not know, Bren-ji,” Jago demurs. It’s true. She doesn’t. It looks messy, certainly; loving and liking, here and there, careless of the associations formed or broken. Just thinking about it makes her itch.

Bren seems to feel it, and know her thoughts. He laughs, a light and pleasant sound.

“You do, though. You understand what I mean even if you don’t feel the feeling. Manchi… it’s so much more elegant.” He turns, then, eyes wide and eyebrows arched. His pupils, Jago notes to herself, are dilated. She narrows her eyes to watch him more closely, in case the gija, or perhaps some of his food, was poisoned.

(If it was, the culprit will end unpleasantly and after a good long time: there isn’t a contract on the paidhi, and anyone inclined to murder him will find themselves an object lesson for anyone else with the same idea.)

(Even in peacetime, one cannot be careful enough.)

“Like a river,” he continues.

Jago tilts her head, putting the words together with the rest of Bren-ji’s thoughts on love and manchi, filed carefully in her mind in case she can one day understand love and re-examine the statements.

“Manchi flows up,” she responds, after a long period of thought in which Bren rests against her, heavy-lidded with sleep. It’s not a rebuttal, exactly, or even a request for clarification. Manchi is at once too neat, refined, logical for the comparison; and yet. 

A strange, reaching feeling infuses her, as if she understands something about Bren, about humans, that she hasn’t before, and at the same time, understands less than ever.

“It does,” Bren agrees slowly, nodding, hair falling into his eyes. He pushes it away with a slow, impatient gesture. “It does, Jago-ji, but also: it flows to the Aiji, doesn’t it? It comes from many sources, and it flows to Tabini. Manchi,” he repeats, “is in this small way like a river. Flowing from many small points, joining and adding together, and eventually it all comes out to the sea.”

Jago says nothing.

“It’s not perfectly accurate,” Bren admits. “Say instead that it flows into a pool, a deep pool, Tabini-aiji. It flows, in one direction. Elegant, inevitable. Even when it shifts or diverts, it can only do one of two things: end, or continue on through the narrow channels. And… the places where it does shift, the eddies in the water… Ilisidi, perhaps.” He catches her eye, pauses a moment. “Chaos in the perfection, logical in its own way. Elegant, yes, and fierce, and beautiful.” That soft smile again; watching her as he speaks the last word.

It isn’t perfectly accurate at all; and yet, at the same time, Jago understands. Inevitable, at least, is correct.

And though it feels wrong to picture manchi flowing down as a river does, it isn’t incorrect, either.

“If manchi is a river,” she finally responds, “what is love?”

It takes her paidhi-ji a very, very long time to respond.

“Like the wind, maybe,” he says, when Jago thought him long asleep. “Loose and messy and influenced by so many different things, touching whatever it cares to.” His voice is quiet, but steady, no longer softly blurred by the spirits he consumed. 

Jago again considers his words, and the meanings in them.

“The wind,” she says, “pushes clouds across the planet, bringing rain and storms and sometimes great disaster.”

“True,” Bren says, toying idly with a hair-ribbon in his lap.

“It can also carry seeds to places they can grow. The wi’itktiin could not fly without it. Wind is as good as is it is bad and as bad as it is good.”

“Also true,” Bren agrees. “A force of nature. Unstoppable.”

They are silent again, companionably so. 

The still-hidden sun begins to tint the distant sky.

“Nai-ji,” Jago says, running fingers through his hair, “I still don’t understand love.”

“No, I know,” Bren sighs. “Any more than I truly understand manchi. The river and the wind aren’t very alike.”

“No,” Jago agrees. “And yet they are. Too similar, and too different. It would be nice,” she offers, “to understand it. You might make a great deal more sense.”

At that her paidhi-ji laughs again, a brighter sound in the dawning day. “Maybe, but I wouldn’t rest my hopes on it. Most humans don’t understand each other particularly well, even the ones in love. Well, my river,” he says, taking on an expression Jago has mentally labeled _trouble _, “Jago-ji, my dearest salad, what do you think? Is it doomed in the end? Will we live out a tragic play?”__

Sometimes, Jago doesn’t know the paidhi is joking, though she knows it better and more often than most atevi would. This morning, she knows very well. This morning, she feels if she could only stretch a little more, she might feel human a moment, rather than atevi; might understand the paidhi a little more. She considers telling him so; then considers how much longer he would talk if she did.

“The river thinks the wind should sleep, Bren-ji,” she says instead, listening to the distant sounds of the house stirring to wakefulness.

“She’s probably right.” Bren pauses for a moment, staring blankly. Jago can see thoughts flicker behind his too-expressive face. The paidhi is sober, now, and wondering if his words have been too much. He is more paidhi than Bren, in the daylight. Jago would tell him how much his face gives away to her, if she didn’t know that it was only to her, if she didn’t watch him every day grow so much more like atevi, and that it would only make him worry. 

“She is right,” Jago agrees, and makes a sacrifice for her human. “Sleep, paidhi. I will stay, today.”

A small furrow appears between his brows, and he tilts his head. “I… in what way is that unusual, Jago-ji?”

The estate is secure. Banichi reigns with iron control of security, and all is for once, however briefly, at peace. Jago rises and strips her clothes, with speed and efficiency, before curling back around Bren on the bed.

She tugs him down to her, a tiny bit amused at his open-mouthed expression (which she knows to be one of surprise). “I will stay, nai-ji, with you, and sleep.”

To her everlasting surprise, he obeys.

Many weeks later, protecting a foolish human, who is absolutely nothing like an atevi and gets himself into ridiculous trouble and must stop trying fix everything and perhaps even listen to his bodyguards on occasion, it is a consoling (if strange) memory.

**Author's Note:**

> Some liberties have been taken with manchi, love, atevi, humans, and the storyline in general; I didn't have the opportunity I expected to read through the books again. I apologize for any errors and inconsistencies.


End file.
